


Spread Your Clipped Wings And Try To Fly

by andiheardthemplaying



Series: Cloud Elf AU [1]
Category: GOT7, K-pop
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-08
Updated: 2016-04-08
Packaged: 2018-05-31 23:33:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6492124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andiheardthemplaying/pseuds/andiheardthemplaying
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All Mark had ever wanted to do was fly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spread Your Clipped Wings And Try To Fly

When Mark was four, he watched his older siblings and their friends learning how to bend the winds to their will and fly. He stared from the window of his classroom during snack breaks, and dreamt about this time in four years, when he would be eight and he would learn how to soar through the air like the birds that sometimes settled on his shoulders and chattered to him about the world they saw as the flew through the clouds. His friends laughed at him for it. Why was he so eager? What was so wonderful about flying? Every sky elf could do it. Mark stayed quiet. He knew they wouldn’t understand. He had tried to explain, to tell them how much he wanted to leave the ground, to feel the wind folding around his body and soar and dive with the birds. They had stared at him like he was strange, and so he never tried to explain again.

 

When Mark was eight, he waited eagerly everyday for the teacher to announce flying lessons. He arrived at school every morning with a bright smile on his face, only for it to fall when the teacher never mentioned flying. Then, one morning, Mark’s mother told him he wouldn’t be going to school that day. Mark was confused. He wasn’t sick, and it wasn’t a holiday, because his siblings were all trudging out the door with their uniforms on, backpacks in hand. Why wasn’t he going to school?   
  


His mother smiled and pulled him to sit down with her at the kitchen table. “I need to talk to you, little one,” she said gently. Mark nodded and sat up straight, listening attentively. His mother smiled sadly.

 

“What is it, mama?” he asked.

 

“Have you learned about cloud elves in school yet, Mark?” she asked. Mark nodded.

 

“Yes. And I know that that’s what I am, mama,” he said quickly, hoping that he could get to school now. They might be flying today! But his mother only smiled wider and nodded at him.

 

“What do you know about them?” she asked. Mark wrinkled his forehead and thought.

 

“They’re small,” he started slowly, “like me. And they have a special person who makes them feel better. But I won’t find mine until I’m older, the teacher said. And she said it would hurt before I found them.” The little boy looked up at his mother and bit his lip here. “I’m nervous about that part, mama - I don’t want to hurt!” His mother smiled again and took his hand.

 

“I know, baby. I don’t want you to hurt either, but hopefully it won’t be for very long,” she said quietly. “What else?”

 

“If they don’t find their person they go away,” Mark continued quietly. His mother nodded.

 

“Good job, little one,” she said quietly. “Do you know why all of that happens?” she asked then. Mark shook his head, finally curious. “It’s because cloud elves are different from other elves. Sky elves are children of the sky. We are connected to the air and the wind, but our bodies are completely separate from them. Do you understand that?” Mark nodded slowly. “Ground elves, water elves and fire elves are all the same. They are connected to their elements, but they are still completely separate from them. Cloud elves are different, though.” Mark nodded again when his mother paused, his head tilted to the side in question.

 

“How are they different, mama?” he asked.

 

“Cloud elves are made of clouds. Of air,” his mother said quietly. “They are not separate from their element. They are a part of it. A part that has been taken from the rest and made into a person.” Mark’s eyes were wide now.

 

“W-what does that mean?” he asked slowly. His mother took a deep breath and continued to explain.

 

“It means that you’re not like other people. You’re made of clouds. And that means that your body is always trying to return to the clouds. That’s why you need an anchor - a special person. That’s why you’ll be in pain before you find them. Once you get old enough, your body will begin to - ” she faltered. Mark had his shoulders curled in and was staring at his mother wide-eyed.

 

“Will begin to what?” he whispered.

 

“It will begin to come apart, essentially. It won’t be visible, but the pain is there because your body will start to go back to the clouds. Once you find your anchor, it will stop - your anchor will keep you here, pull you back together.” She stood up and walked around the table to sit beside her son. Mark turned and pushed his face into his mother’s shoulder.

 

“I’m scared, mama,” he whispered.

 

“I know, little one,” she said. She blinked quickly to dispel the tears that had gathered in her eyes. “I know.” They sat together silently for a long while. Mark had known what he was since he was little. He had known that his life would be different from his siblings, his classmates, his friends. He had never known how different, though, and it was overwhelming.

 

Finally, the little boy sat back and rubbed at his eyes. His mother smiled and ruffled his hair. Mark smiled up at her, his eyes crinkling. “Can I go to school now, mama?” he asked. His mother’s smile fell.

 

“Mark - the reason I told you all of this today, the reason you didn’t go to school - ” Mark stared at his mother quizzically. She sighed. “It’s because today is the day your class is learning how to fly,” she said quietly. Mark didn’t respond for a moment, and then his eyes widened and he jumped from his chair. He stared at his mother for a moment, his eyes bright, confused, and then he ran for the door.

 

“Mark!” his mother yelled from behind him, but he was already halfway down the street. He ran all the way to his school, the sound of his footsteps in time with his panting breaths, loud in his ears. When he finally arrived at his school, he skidded to a halt just outside the fence. He stared up into the sky - the big, blue sky that he dreamed of every night - and felt the tears that the wind had whipped away as he ran tumble down his cheeks.

 

He could see them.  _ He could see them. _ His friends, his classmates, who had laughed at him for being so excited, tumbling and soaring through the air above the field. He could hear their laughter, almost see their smiles. The wind carried their excited exclamations and conversations straight to his ears.

 

He vaguely registered his mother stumbling to a halt beside him, panting harshly and clutching at her side. Distantly, he felt a pain in his hands and knees when he fell to the ground. All of his attention, all of his being, was focused on those shapes in the sky.

 

Minutes, hours, later, Mark shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. “Mark?” his mother asked quietly. He resolutely avoided looking at her as he brushed off his jeans and wiped his face.

 

“I can still join in the lesson,” he whispered. “I’ll just apologize for being late.” He had begun walking toward the gates of the school when his mother caught his shoulders and pulled him back. He whirled around and shook her off, glaring. “Let me go, mama!” he exclaimed. She shook her head sadly and grabbed his small shoulders again and didn’t let go.

 

“Mark,” she said quietly, “this is what I was trying to tell you earlier. You can’t fly.” Mark stared at his mother’s face, stricken, and shook his head.

 

“That’s not true,” he whispered. “That’s not true! I can too fly! I know it, I can feel it!” he screamed. His mother blinked away tears and smiled sadly.

 

“You’re able to, yes, but it’s too dangerous,” she said quietly. “Because you’re an un-anchored cloud elf, getting any closer to the sky and the clouds could mean that you disappear faster. That you don’t even reach maturity before disappearing.” Mark looked down quietly, his shoulders shaking with silent sobs, and didn’t resist when his mother pulled him closer. “I’m so sorry, Mark,” she whispered, “but we can’t risk it.” He nodded into his mother’s shoulder and allowed her to hoist him up onto her hip. Slowly, he snaked his arms around her neck and held on tight as she began to walk home. When they arrived, she tucked him into bed and kissed his forehead, and watched as he burrowed into his blankets and listened as his crying grew louder. She sat with him for the rest of the day, stroking the hair she could reach and singing softly, wishing that she could do anything at all to make things better.

 

Later that night, when his mother had finally left to make dinner and greet his siblings and his father, Mark sat up in bed. He stared down at his hands - small and skinny, and that had never bothered him before now - and tried to think through what he had learned that day.

 

He couldn’t fly. He wasn’t allowed to fly. The one thing he had wanted to do more than anything else in the world, and he couldn’t do it because he had been born a cloud elf. He decided then that he wouldn’t let that stop him ever again. He had lost one dream, but he could find others, and chase them to the end.

 

The next day, when his mother looked at him sadly and asked if he was alright, he mustered up a smile that was almost as bright as his usual grin and nodded. “I’ll be fine, mama,” he said. “I’ll be fine.”

 

When Mark was sixteen, he was casted for a Korean entertainment agency. When he decided to try, to go to Korea and train to become a singer, he remembered his promise to himself so many years ago. So when they asked for his type, his voice was strong when he said, “Sky elf.” Later that night, he fought with his parents about it. His mother cried and begged him not to go, not to ignore what he was and risk his life. His father glowered, brow furrowed, and commanded him sternly to contact the agency, tell them it was all a mistake, that he wouldn’t be able to go to Korea. But Mark stood firm, and finally was allowed to go to Korea as a sky elf.

 

He arrived and was immersed in training and language classes. He threw himself into his dancing, into his singing and rapping, and worked as hard as he could on the unfamiliar language. He worked and worked, and never noticed the twinges in his chest and shoulders until they spread out and down through his arms into his hands and fingers, and up into his neck and head. When one morning he woke up and could barely sit up from the stiffness, he lay and stared at the ceiling. He slowed his breathing and forced it steady, forced himself to ignore the pain.

 

It grew hot, like fire racing through his veins, and he gasped as sweat beaded on his forehead. He squeezed his eyes closed and grit his teeth, and then he forced himself up and out of bed. He stumbled into the shower and turned the water on as cold as it would go and sank to the floor. He shivered as the water hit his skin, icy cold against the heat of the pain. Slowly, so slowly, the pounding spray beat it back, numbed it enough that he could stand and breathe normally, wash his hair and face and skin and stop the trembling in his hands.

  
When Mark stepped out into the hall, showered and dressed, he looked the way he always did. None of his dorm mates looked twice at him, wishing him good morning and moving on with their day. He threw himself back into his training and pretended that he didn’t notice the pain getting worse, the fire getting hotter. He was fine. He would be fine.


End file.
